The fuel pump on my Max passed through to Valhalla last month. My mechanic warned me that with all the rust around the area, he couldn't guarantee that dropping the gas tank to replace the pump wouldn't cause collateral damage to something. Sure enough, once I got the truck back, I started noticing a gas smell and that the engine needed to crank a while when starting before fuel reached the engine, and now that the streets have dried out a bit I was able to spot the gas leaking off the tank. The mechanic used a mirror to spot the leak near the top of the tank and warned me a replacement part would be difficult to come by. It is supposedly not something normal parts places deal with and he told me we'd have to find something off a parts vehicle from a winter/salt free region, as the equipment in that area of my truck was too rusty to fabricate anything onto it.

However, after getting home and checking in the sevice manual, I'm not sure what it is I'm looking for. He called it the "sending unit" and mentioned that it was seperate from the fuel pump. The manual has nothing by that name. (It also doesn't have the fuel pump itself labeled, so I'm wondering if the manual writers were sick of this section and decided to skip ahead to something cooler? <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> ) Anyway, I called the garage and talked to the office guy that helped with my repair. He was convinced it was close to the fuel pump but couldn't pinpoint the part from my description of the diagram.

The parts that are listed: the 'packing', 'fuel pump assembly' (a disc with hoses/wires routed through, but with the 'packing' between it and what looks like the actual [unlabeled] pumping mechanism that drops into the tank), a 'fuel pump connector' on the assembly, and the 'main' and 'return' hose connections.

Any ideas which of these parts would be referred to as a 'sending unit' and/or where rust-free versions of them (or the whole gas tank assembly) could be acquired by someone in Milwaukee?